


A Feast of Bread and Honey

by BawdryWeirdsley



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Genre: Anal Sex, Beards (Facial Hair), Blow Jobs, Bottom Eivor (Assassin's Creed), Dominance, Falling In Love, Food Sex, Love Confessions, M/M, Male Eivor (Assassin's Creed), Mild S&M, Muscles, Power Dynamics, Rough Kissing, Size Difference, Submission, Teasing, assassin's creed Valhalla - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:54:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BawdryWeirdsley/pseuds/BawdryWeirdsley
Summary: Eivor is hungry for what only Tarben can offer, but is he ready to accept his feelings and admit to himself why he keeps coming back for more? Set early in the game, no spoilers.
Relationships: Eivor/Tarben (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	A Feast of Bread and Honey

The new land is a land where the air is busy with scent. Back home the wind might carry the salt of the ocean, the lightness of new snow, or the heaviness of compacted ice cleaving to the rock below. Subtle and silent perfumes, content to be pushed to the background by the sweetness of ale, or the sweat of bodies, or the tang of blood. 

In this new land—the land of the Saxons, the air is as heavily freighted with scent as the land is with colour. The earth has a mineral odor of loamy clay, so rich with the promise of nourishment that Eivor feels he could scoop it up with his two hands and eat it. Bitter nettle and the sweetness of clover tussle with the deep green scent of the lush grass as it bends and breaks beneath Eivor’s boots. The river has a perfume that is not the sea, cool and ancient and somehow alive. It puts Eivor in mind of a great slippery eel, twining restlessly around the land. The oak trees sweat golden resin, and the birches have a dry, clean savor like the rare and valuable paper hidden in the reliquaries of the monasteries. These Saxon monuments to their pale, scrawny Christ have their own perfume of stone and cloying incense and the lousey wool and unwashed bodies of the pious.

Ravensthorpe has its own scent too—one he’s coming to love. Fresh wood from the new buildings, fresh earth from the well trodden paths between the dwellings that are well on their way to becoming roads, and best of all fresh bread, drawing him away from the river and his jorvikings, to the low wooden hut with the squat stone chimney that trails smoke day and night.

Tarben smiles when he sees Eivor in the doorway.

“Ah, hungry again already?”

“A man cannot help his appetites,” Eivor replies.

Tarben inclines his head. “It seems he cannot. Inside, then.”

The bakery offers a new array of scents that sets Eivor’s mouth to watering. Woodsmoke, of course, the yeast of the rising dough, honey and flour and caraway, the sharp medicine of clove, the faint spice of the precious cinnamon, locked away in a casket as closely guarded as any Monastery chest.

It’s a small room, made smaller by Tarben’s great size. Eivor is no stripling, but the baker stands easily a head taller than he does, and his wide shoulders are thick with muscle. The great slab of his belly is dusted with flour, and there’s flour in his beard and in his dark mane of hair.

_ Hungry indeed, and you know well what will sate me. _

Tarben does this often—Pretends he does not know why Eivor is here. Makes him ask for it. 

_ How is it that I’m so brave in battle, yet I cannot find the words to ask him for what I want without dancing around the matter? _

It’s never been a problem for him with his other lovers. He’s able to speak plainly enough with them, so why it’s different with  _ this _ man he cannot say.  _ Ah, but that you do know. He pulls at your heart as well as your loins, and it makes you hesitate. _

“What is it you’d taste today?” Tarben asks. 

“I...what do you have?” Eivor asks.

“Fine heather honey come in on a boat from the north. It tastes of high, cold, grey places. Perhaps it will put you in mind of home, Dane?”

“I’m sure my brothers and sisters will enjoy it.”

Tarben shakes his head. “This is a treasure I’m keeping back, I’m afraid. It’s too good to be wasted on those who do not appreciate it. Would you try it Eivor? I know that  _ you’ve _ a taste for such things.”

He turns to the shelf and lifts the small clay pot, peeling back the wax top, holds it to Eivor’s nose.

The sweetness is intoxicating, but less intoxicating than the scent of the huge body beneath the green linen. Eivor’s eyes are drawn helplessly to the sliver of darkly furred chest that shows at the front of the baker’s jerkin where the top few toggles are undone against the heat of the room. That’s where he’d like to bury his nose, to smell the warm masculine scent of the sweat conjured up by the ever-burning oven. To taste the salt of it.  _ Send the honey to Hel! _

“Would you like to try it? Tarben asks softly, and as always Eivor finds himself speechless and foolish.  _ Does he know what it is I wish to taste? Of course he does. It amuses him to toy with me, and curse me if I do not enjoy it. _

“Have you a spoon?”

Tarben shakes his head, pityingly.

_ Oh Eivor, must we pretend? _

He dips his finger into the small pot and brings it to Eivor’s lips, the gold glistening in the scant sunlight that filters through the latticework of the high window. 

“I’m waiting, Eivor. If it drips upon the floor you’ll have to taste it on your knees like a cur lapping tallow from the hearth.”

Eivor shakes his head, as though he’s willing to humor the man, but ultimately above such nonsense, but when he bends his head to suck the large finger into his mouth he feels his cock quicken and swell and knows that the pretence is as useless as it always is. Tarben’s knuckles smell of bread, a good, honest, scent. The skin of his finger is tough, thickened with work. Hard in a different way to the heavy prick that haunts his hot, guilty dreams.

_ Gods I want it. Must I beg him for it? _

“Ah good,” Tarben rumbles when Eivor is finished. “That tongue is sweeter than honey.”

He sets the pot down and moves forwards, backing Eivor against the vast oak slab of a table where the bread is kneaded. His great hands close around Eivor’s hips, boosting the warrior onto the tabletop as easily as you’d boost a child into the saddle. The surface is silky with flour, which rises like a mist as Tarbin pushes Eivor’s thighs apart to stand between them.

“I’ll be coated like a loaf ready for baking,” Eivor protests.

“Aye you will. I’ll send you back out into the village well floured and kneaded, and all will know that Tarben has had his thumbs pricking proud Eivor’s dough.”

“You’d speak to me so? Ah, I ought to take up my axe and split you in two!”

Tarbin snorts derisively. “Both of us know who will do the splitting, though I need no axe to do it.”

* * *

His large fingers are deft as they unfasten the clasps and buttons of Eivor’s shirt. 

“You did not don your armor this morning,” Tarben remarks as he tugs Eivor’s shirt open.

“I need not arm myself for battle to fetch the bread,” Eivor says as haughtily as he’s able with his chest bared and flour on his nose and his eyelashes and clinging to the sparse golden hairs of his chest.

“Of course not. I’m sure there was no other motive for coming here garbed so lightly.”

He tosses Eivor’s shirt carelessly to the floor, and pushes him down, to lie on his back on the table top, legs dangling either side of the baker’s thighs. 

_ Perhaps he means to knead me flat after all! I believe he could do it with those great paws of his. _

His knees are spread wide to accommodate Tarben’s bulk between them and thus the bulge of cock straining the dark linen of his breeches is all too obvious. Tarben laughs as he sets a floury palm on it, leaving a large white hand print on the cloth.

“That should give them something to speak of.”

“Curse you, Tarben,” Eivor gasps.

“Although they will not know for certain it was me. You will have to have all the men of the settlement place their hands there to see which one of us is guilty.”

“You are incapable of guilt.”

“Untrue, little Eivor, but why would I feel guilty for taking what is so freely offered to me?”

Eivor shakes his head.

“Ah, now that pretty golden hair is filled with flour too,” Tarben remarks. “A punishment for your lack of honesty, perhaps—silver hair to grant the wisdom to accept your need?”

Tarben’s hand presses down on Eivor’s cock again, and he cannot help but moan and push himself up into the other man’s palm.

“Rising dough that must be kneaded well,” the baker says approvingly. “Is that not why you came here?’

He draws loose the thong that holds Eivor’s britches closed, and pulls his cock free. The strong hand touching him so intimately makes Eivor squirm and swear, stirring up a fresh cloud of flour into the air.

Tarben’s eyes—normally so merry—shine with a harder light than most of the townsfolk are used to seeing there. Perhaps this is the light that shone in them when his trade was with the blade and shield instead of spices and sweetness?  _ Although if this were truly a battle I would not yield to him so easily. If I have any weakness, it’s him and his rough kisses and big, clever hands. _

Now Tarben is stepping back, picking up the small clay pot of honey.

“Something sweet since you look so sour, Eivor.”

He paints the honey on Eivor’s lips, and then the nubs of his nipples, and the dark tattoo of sinuous Jörmungandr that coils down his ribs and belly, as fascinated with the tattoos as all Saxons seem to be. Every place Tarben touches is quickened, and Eivor is aware of his breath coming faster, of the skin on his shoulders and thighs shivering up into goosebumps.

“That’s better,” Tarben says softly, but it needs a little more.” His hand strokes Eivor’s cock slowly, assessing as if testing the readiness of the flushed and eager prick, and Eivor sighs and spreads his thighs wider, letting his body ask for what he cannot put into words. When Tarben tilts the small pot over his prick and lets the precious honey flow to coat his cock and his sack, Eivor’s heart thuds so fast he fears it will tear free of his chest. Tarben presses his legs wider. 

“Perfect, although a good baker must taste to be sure.”

The smile he gives Eivor is wicked. “What say you, Vikingr?”

Eivor swallows. “Gods Tarben,  _ please _ . Do not make me wait longer.”

Tarben frowns. “Patience!” he taps his finger against the head of Eivor’s prick making him gasp. “Haste will ruin the rise.”

He steps back, moving around to the side of the table, but Eivor doesn’t have long to miss the warm comforting weight of his flesh. His hands slide up the insides of Eivor’s arms, pinning them gently but firmly to the table, and he bends low to run his tongue over Eivor’s honied lips, half kissing, half teasing, drawing back each time Eivor tries to kiss him back.

“So keen to feast! It is a failing of your people.”

“Too slow to act—it is a failing of yours,” Eivor gasps, and earns a chuckle.

“You’ll wait as long as I wish you to.”

He shoves his tongue into Eivor’s mouth before he can come up with a suitably cutting reply, and his mouth tastes of honey, and his kiss is anything but teasing now. He nips at Eivor’s lips, forcing his mouth wide, setting the pace.

“Ah, maybe you have it right? I could eat you whole right now.” His teeth sink into Eivor’s neck hard enough that he knows he’ll carry the mark of it tomorrow.  _ Kissed on one side by a wolf and the other by this great bear! Although I think I know which I prefer. _

The bristling beard tickles Eivor’s flesh as Tarben sucks his nipples into his mouth one after the other, punishing them with his teeth as though he really does mean to devour him.

The pain adds spice to the sweetness of the pleasure Eivor feels to be used by this powerful man. In the normal course of his life he only deals out pain and takes the submission of lesser warriors as his due. Perhaps that’s why it excites him so to submit to Tarben’s strength? To yield himself up to whatever torment the baker cares to inflict. Their coupling—however tenderly it begins and ends—is far from gentle at its peak, and Eivor finds he craves it as hotly as he craves the blood-mist of battle.

Tarben kisses the honey from Eivor’s chest and his belly, and by the time he’s moved back down between Eivor’s legs, the warrior’s unaccustomed shyness has long evaporated.

“Please Tarben, I’d have your mouth on me. I’m almost ready to spend and you’ve barely touched me.”

Tarben smiles at him. “There’s the bold Eivor we love so well. Well, I cannot have you adding your cream to the recipe and spoiling it entirely.”

Eivor rolls his eyes. “Just suck me, you fool. Anything to stop your prattle.”

“I’ll remember your tone when I turn you onto your belly and spit your arse,” Tarben growls. “But I must confess I cannot wait much longer myself.”

His fingertips dig painfully into the muscles of Eivor’s thighs, but when his hot, eager mouth slides down over Eivor’s cock, all other sensation is obliterated. Eivor’s hands fly to Tarben’s head, not holding him there to direct his attentions as he might if any other man knelt to him, but caressing, marveling at the feeling of the heavy skull—such a vast, lumbering Jotun, yet with the finesse of the three spinners, drawing their deadly needle through the warp and weft of his desire.

He cries out as Tarben’s tongue flickers along the underside of his shaft, not caring who might hear them beyond these four walls. They must all know by now that he and Tarben lie together—whether there’s more to it than that he’s still trying to discern himself. The wet mouth and busy tongue feel far better on his cock than any quim, and as Tarben continues to suck him clean, he feels the pulsing drumbeat of his peak rising towards its climax.

“Hold, hold, I cannot wait longer.” He pushes Tarebn’s head away, and the Saxon grins down at him. 

“What is it you want of me, then?”

“You know full well.”

“Ask me, Eivor.”

“I wish you to mount me. Cover me as a stallion covers a mare.”

“You’d be Loki to my Svaðilfari?”

Eivor barks a surprised laugh. “You’ve been listening to the tales of my clan?”

“Indeed I have.” Tarben’s expression is serious now. “I’d know more of you. More of your ways.”

“Why?” 

Tarben shakes his head. “Now it is you who would force me to speak my thoughts aloud? You know why, love.”

_ Love _ . There it is, in the open.

“That’s what I am to you? Your love?”

“You are many things to me Eivor, but that is one of them.”

Eivor nods. “You do me honor. I...feel the same. But if you truly love me, make me wait no longer.”

Even if he’d a mind to it would be too late to worry about the flour now! It sticks to his chest and belly when Tarben turns him over, gets in his beard and nose.  _ Norns, could I not have coupled with a man who plied a neater trade? _

The fingers spreading his buttocks distracts him soon enough. The warm weight of Tarben’s belly rests on his back, holding him steady and safe as the grease slicked fingers stroke at his entrance. He’s coupled with men eagerly and often, but seldom like this. It’s usually a fumble or a suck in the long grass or a camp tent. He’s yielded to no one else in this way before Tarben, but he means to make up for lost time.

_ Besides, no prick could hope to measure up to his, mine included. _

“We must work the dough to make it good,” Tarben says as his finger slides deliciously, shockingly into Eivor’s body. The feeling of intrusion only lasts for a second or two, and then he relaxes into it, craving more. His cock is almost painful in its readiness to spit his seed and he knows he can’t last much longer.

“Enough talk of dough and bread and baking! Just fuck me.”

Tarben only laughs. “You do not wish me to fill this sweet little bun with my honey?”

Enviro growls with impatience, and Tarben laughs again. “Very well, but do not expect me to take you gently when you continue so impatient.”

The head of his cock is a lot wider than his fingers, and he pushes it against the flinching ring of Eivor’s entrance as crudely as promised, unrelenting as Eivor struggles to open to him.

_ But Gods, let it hurt! Let me feel him. _

And the burn of his overtaxed muscle doesn’t last long. He wants Tarben too badly, and when the Saxon pushes into him in one long, deliciously slow thrust Eivor’s cries are all pleasure.

_ Now they really will hear us! _

Oh, but how can he be silent in the teeth of such pleasure? He’s up on his toes, his britches tangled around his ankles, his sweat-streaked chest turning the flour to paste beneath him. His prick is bent painfully against the hard edge of the table, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care about anything but Tarben’s strong hands gripping his hips, and that thick length driving into him, fucking him mercilessly as he cries out his pleasure. Tarben’s rough hand fumbles its way around his hip to grab at his cock, and he’s barely closed his fist around it before Eivor is spilling his seed onto the wooden floor. He hears Tarben’s growl and notes the way his legs tense and his breath grows harsh.

“Do it then, fill me with your honey, if you  _ must _ speak in such terms.”

“Little whelp,” growls Tarben, affectionately. 

_ If anyone else called me ‘little’ not to mention ‘whelp’ they’d be spitting out teeth, but when he calls me that it warms me like the sun. _

The sound of Tarben’s moan and the twitch of his fat cock as it fills him with Tarben’s spend are almost more fulfilling than his own release.  _ I’ll have the scent of him on me all day, taken and used and marked by him. _

It stings as Tarben pulls out, but he craves this too. To feel the throb and ache long after he’s left this small room as though the man is still moving inside him.

_ Perhaps one day soon I won’t leave. We could make this place larger. Find space for a bed large enough for both of us. Or he could move up to the longhouse with me. Give Dag something fresh to grumble over.  _

But these are all concerns for the future. Right now he’s content to pull on his flour-dusted clothes, to be kissed and held, and to have the tangles combed out of his long pale hair by those dexterous fingers.

“Come back soon, Eivor,” Tarben says.

“You know I will,” he replies. “These days I never stay sated for long.”

* * *

His large bed seems rather lonely that night, and all of the next day his thoughts dwell in that small, hot bakery. Would it be too soon to go back there? He would not want the man to tire of him.

_ Yet again my warrior’s courage has failed me. _

He does not see Tarben walking the streets or sitting outside his hut to breathe the fresh air, although he passes that way more than is strictly necessary as he helps his kinsmen to build the new fishery to take advantage of the bounty on their doorstep.

_ Is he avoiding me? Did he speak those loving words more lightly than I heard them? _

He throws himself into his tasks to silence the whir of his mind and returns to the Longhouse long after dark, exhausted and sore.  _ But not the right kind of sore. _

“Hungry?” Randvi asks.

He had not seen her there in the dark.  _ Alone again. She spends too much time alone. _

“Is there stew still left?” he asks.

“Something better than stew. In your room. The look she gives him is teasing, and makes him frown.

_ What could she mean?  _ He’s in no mood for games, and the way she sometimes speaks to him makes him uneasy of late. It will be better when Sigurd’s back. Probably.

In the dim flickering light of the fading fire he can see a small object resting on his flat straw pillow.  _ And that scent...fresh and sweet. _

The small loaf is still warm from the oven. The pricked center of it oozes with golden honey.

_ Ah Gods, did Randvi understand the message of it? If her look was anything to go by she surely did!  _ He’s glad there’s no one here to see his blushes.

“Best eat it soon. It grows cold.”

The deep voice rumbling out of the shadows startles him, and his hand flies to his side for the axe that isn’t there.

“Peace, Eivor. I have only come to claim what is mine,” Tarben says. “Will you walk with me to my dwelling, or should I throw you over my shoulder in vikingr style?”

“To your dwelling?”

“Aye, I expected you to come to me at nightfall, and yet you did not. So shall I carry you, or will you follow me?”

“Whatever you prefer,” Eivor manages to say. The relief that overwhelms him is incredible. He did not imagine it after all.

“I think I shall carry you. Let all who care to see that I have claimed you as my own.”

“Whatever you do, do it swiftly,” Eivor says. “I have hunger upon me as terrible as Fenrir’s.”

“You shall have bread and honey to the end of your days,” Tarben says.

“Then let my days be many, for I’m ready to feast.”

**Author's Note:**

> More writing and general nonsense over on Twitter @BawdryW


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